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10.03.2011

Make your own labels cheap!

I made real clothing labels for less than $13? No really. I am not a magician... or a mime. But I don't know what that has to do with anything.When I first thought it might be nice to have labels sewn into the things I made for my kids (mostly so my 3-year-old could know front from back) I looked into woven labels... and quickly gave that idea a big fat "Psssshaaaaa". As in, "Pshaaaaa right! That's never going to happen." Holy crap. Those suckers are expensive. On top of that, there are minimums that I'll never use up on my couple-times-a-month sewing projects. Lame.Then came See Kate Sew. I think I found her tutorial via pinterest? Not sure. Anywho, I must credit her with this great idea and tutorial. Here's what I did.Have you heard of Spoonflower? They will print fabric for you. It's awesome. If you've ever uploaded photos to be printed and sent to your house on shutterfly or snapfish, it's pretty much the same thing... except on fabric! I took my blog header, and made it a jpg. I think you can do this in Paint. Sorry to be all fancy, but I have Illustrator and Photoshop, which I used... but seriously, it's a jpg. You can do it in Word I think. And if you can't, Google how to convert what you have. You don't even need a "logo". You can just type out "Mommy made it" or something like that and save it as a jpg. Are you still reading?Add a bunch of white space around it. I other words... crop it with a lot of room on all sides. Maybe an inch on each side? Upload that sucker to Spoonflower.

Once your jpg is uploaded, it should look something like this.

Now here is where I admit I messed up. See the rulers along each edge? And see how my design isn't even 1" long? Yeah, I failed to pay attention to that the first time I ordered and my labels were way too small. So... see where it says Design Size on the right? Mess with that to make your labels the size you want. If you still can't figure it out, upload a bigger jpg. Like I said it took me two tries.

I ordered the quilting weight in a fat quarter.

About a week later.... it arrived.

The one on the right is the first batch I ordered... too small! No worries, I did it again... and lightened the yellow. Much better.

Check out all those labels! And you paid a grand total of $11... plus shipping, but I think my shipping was like $1. Awesome.

Cut those suckers out. See why we left lots of extra white space?

Iron in all 4 sides. You'll probably burn the crap out of your fingers on this step. : )

Stitch all the way around.

Done! I think my total cost is less than 6 cents a piece. I ordered a fat quarter... you could order a yard too but that's a crazy amount of labels : ) Let me know how it goes!

Hi! So I have one of these labels on a skirt I made for my daughter. She's worn that thing through dirt and daycare many times and it's been washed many times as a result. I don't see any fading so far! That said, my labels are mostly white with a little color. I'm sure if you did an all over dark red or something you might see a difference. Hope that helps. So far so good... no fading! Thanks - Sarah

these are adorable! I just found you via Pinterest, someone had posted your kaleidoscope quilt. I recognized it right away as the one I had seen on Film on the Fridge. I have daydreamed about making it but it looked difficult. You made it sound so easy! I am going to try it next week. Thank you so much :)

Another idea would be to back the labels with plain fabric, then sew a square around each label and cut out with pinking shears or rotary blade. Kind of a primitive look. Thanks for posting these. trudie

you can print your own labels onto fabric at home!! You just need freezer paper. Cut a piece of freezer paper to letter size and then iron onto the back of your piece of fabric, cut fabric to size and it will run through your normal printer no problem. You may need to experiment a couple of prints the get the amount of ink correct as in draft, normal or best. Hope this helps too.

Your blog is very useful to all the people especially for Banner Designers. So much important information is there in your site and my site is also having valuable information.cheap logo designscheap logos

Hi, I have another idea.... I bought a pack of inkjet fabric sheets. Then I printed my labels on the computer and then printed them out. Soooo easy. They are washable too, because I ironed the labels with a hot iron and that seemed to have sealed the ink. Now I have professional labels for my clothing range.Hugs, joey

Hi. Not at all. My daughter has a skirt I made that's probably two years old that has one of these labels in it. It's been washed dozens of times and I can't tell that there has been any fading. They hold up really well!

Very cool. I make camping gear (tents, tarps and hammocks). I want to label my creations. I like your logo at the top of your webpage, but the eyes of the sheep didn't seem to translate to the product that Spoonflower sent you. Or did it? Would a different fabric selection give better resolution to the eyes? I didn't find out on the Spoonflower website, maybe because I didn't register. Jeff

Hi Jeff. I never really noticed that but you are right. The eyes are really small... both eyes together are smaller than one stitch on my sewing machine so I don't know if any fabric could have handled that any better. I did get the cheapest fabric option available though, so maybe if you throw a couple more bucks at it, the quality might be better? I assume spoonflower will send you a sample if you ask though. Thanks for stopping by! Overall my labels have held up great :)